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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685846">the truth is out there</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars'>26stars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fall Prompts 2020 [19]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Daisy is me with a budget, Established Relationship, Halloween, Lots of halloween cliches, Multi, T for innuendo and some halloween horror references, scavenger hunt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:42:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,334</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685846</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma and Fitz come home from work on October 1 to find that their home has been completely transformed since they left this morning. A ghost in the front tree, bats on the porch roof, a rather grouchy face on the door…and that’s just the outside. Inside, Daisy has plenty of surprises in store for them, and one of them is “ghost hunting” for her by following clues she’s hidden throughout the house, which promise to make finding her worth their while.</p><p>For the fall prompt 'Bus Kids+Scream' and my femslash bingo square 'inside joke'</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fall Prompts 2020 [19]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the truth is out there</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/gifts">agentmmayy</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks for being patient, Ness! This prompt was fun!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“This is what we get for leaving her alone all day, huh?” Fitz said, standing in the driveway and staring up at the tree in the front yard. The oak had not yet dropped its leaves for fall, but something was now hanging from its branches that certainly had not been there when the two of them left for work that morning—a rather classic ghost that appeared to be made from a large piece of white satin bound around a beach-ball head with a face painted on it.</p><p>“Oh god, Fitz, look at the door,” Jemma said, having already made her way from the driveway to the front walk. Fitz pulled his satchel from the backseat and followed her, making his way up the thin sidewalk to confront the storm door that now bore a remarkable resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster.</p><p>“Looks like she spent quite a bit of time on that jack-o-lantern too,” Fitz observed, eyeing the pumpkin on the step.</p><p>“Where did she even get all this stuff?” Jemma wondered aloud, staring now at the flock of bats individually suspended from the porch rafters. “Did she buy it all today?”</p><p>“I’d put money on the possibility that she’s been hiding this stuff ever since last Halloween,” he muttered, thinking of some delivery packages in the past year that he never saw the contents of. “You got your keys?”</p><p>The door wasn’t locked, however, and they pushed open the front door to find their house confusingly dark for the early hour. Fitz reached for the light switch nearest the door as he stepped inside, but then he pulled his hand back at the sight of a large piece of orange paper taped over the entire switch plate.</p><p><strong>NO LIGHTS</strong> it read in Daisy’s handwriting.</p><p>Jemma audibly gasped at his elbow. “Look!”</p><p>Amidst the drawn curtains, their front living room had been totally transformed with blacklights, a fake cauldron emitting dry ice steam, and a black cat silhouette taking up one wall. In the corner recliner, a figure sat with a pumpkin on her lap, a hooded cape obscuring most of her face and body.</p><p>“Well done, Daisy,” Jemma was saying, already making her way over to her. The figure didn’t move or say anything, however, so Jemma reached over to prod her shoulder. At this, the figure canted to one side, the hood slipping off and revealing a skull.</p><p>Fitz jumped as Jemma yelped, reaching again for the lights and finding himself blocked by another deferring paper.</p><p>“Ah, so the brave ghost hunters have come at last!” a cartoonish version of Daisy’s voice suddenly rang out from a Bluetooth speaker on the mantel. “Wonderful—I've been needing some assistance. There seems to have been quite a bit of haunting around here lately! Your first task is to find clue number one, which will be in one of the places the victim often sees the killer just before it’s too late!”</p><p>Her voice was replaced with audio that sounded like stock for a horror movie back ground—creaking doors, gusting wind, distant howls, and a tuneless sequence of hollow tones. Fitz looked at Jemma, who only let out a slow breath and tossed her purse down on the sofa, then turned to Fitz with her hands on her hips.</p><p>“Well? I’ve seen the same horror movies you have, and all of them were with Daisy, so what could she be referring to?”</p><p>It was, they eventually deduced, the bathroom mirror (“You know—someone’s always using the mirror, opens the medicine cabinet, and then when they close it again, the killer’s behind them?”). The bathroom light had been replaced with a blacklight, and inside the medicine cabinet, they found a small stuffed monkey with a note written in blacklight ink.</p><p>
  <em>Clue 2 is where parents have to check for monsters (and where we can do our monkey business once you find me).</em>
</p><p>(“I <em>have</em> never and <em>will</em> never call it that,” Jemma huffed as she turned and headed for the stairs.)</p><p>Up in their bedroom, which had been decorated with a mess of cotton spiderwebs, Fitz found a flashlight waiting on the bed. Jemma was already crouching to look beneath the bed when a door slammed downstairs, making them both yelp and causing Jemma to knock her head on the underside of the bedframe.</p><p>“Daisy!” Fitz shouted through the open bedroom door. “Enough already!”</p><p>No answer came, and Jemma finally emerged from beneath their bed with a pair of her old light-equipped lab goggles and another note.</p><p>
  <em>Now you're headed where Micah found Katie's old picture in Paranormal Activity. Something has been making noise up there…could it have been a squirrel? Or something more sinister? Find clue 3 there.</em>
</p><p>Fitz groaned and made for the hall, then pulled down the ladder that went up to the attic.</p><p>Up in the musty space, his and Jemma's light sources came in handy, because Daisy had gone so far as to actually <em>remove</em> all the lightbulbs from their fixtures. There were also a few rubber Halloween masks hung on hooks around the space, and Fitz tried to keep his eyes on all of them while Jemma made a beeline for the stuffed squirrel sitting on top of a stack of boxes. As soon as she picked it up, a screech cut through the silent attic, making them both scream again, but it was only another Bluetooth speaker lighting up in the corner of the space.</p><p>“It’s a trick question, actually," Daisy's voice told them with a smile in her tone. "Squirrels are demons on their best days. Clue number four is where little-boy Will met the monster that turned his world upside down.”</p><p>Fitz, still trying to catch his breath, looked confusedly at Jemma.</p><p>“<em>Stranger Things</em>,” she said knowingly, moving back towards the ladder. “Remember watching that together last year? She must mean the garden shed.”</p><p>The sun had gotten lower by the time they got back outside, so they kept using the flashlight and goggles as they heaved open the shed door.</p><p>“Oh, hell,” Fitz grimaced at the sight inside, immediately turning away from the fake blood all over the floor. “This is too much.”</p><p>“Come<em> on, </em>Daisy…” Jemma groaned under her breath as she picked her way around the circumference to grab the paper that was stuck to the far wall with a bloody knife. She brought it back out to the lawn to read it with Fitz who was relieved to see the phrase <em>final clue </em>at the top.</p><p>
  <em>Only one thing standing between you and the last surprise—what do we have in the garage that’s no match for a zombie, a dog, or a daisy?</em>
</p><p>This one took more discussion as they traipsed around the house to the garage—it couldn’t be a shovel, couldn’t be a pair of hedge trimmers, couldn’t be a chainsaw…</p><p>But Fitz suddenly knew the answer when he opened the garage and saw the pile of potting soil bags they had never gotten around to using that summer. He pointed this out to Jemma, immediately striding over to the pile, ready to be done with the game…</p><p>Behind him, Daisy’s car suddenly roared to life, making him and Jemma both scream (again) as they spun towards the headlights. Fitz had already grabbed Jemma and flung them both away from the car when the roar finally quieted and the headlights clicked off, and a few seconds later, Daisy climbed out of her car, dying laughing.</p><p>“Oh my god, I can’t wait to watch the video of that!” she was wheezing, tears actually running down her face. “Good ghost-hunting, guys! Happy Halloween!”</p><p>Fitz was too keyed up to say anything, but that didn’t stop him from picking up the nearest bag of potting soil and hurling it at Daisy as payback.</p><p>(She blasted it apart with her powers before it hit, of course, but plenty of dirt still landed all over her, and they decided to call it even.)</p>
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